How often is too often to go to Dave and Adam’s store when you’re in Buffalo? Turns out the answer to that is “three times,” at least for me.
This is more due to the way I collect, but also the current state of the hobby and probably the current state of buying and selling in general. There was stuff there for me, but it wasn’t syncing.
As I mentioned on the last visit, Dave and Adam’s store is half clothing (Bills, Sabers and Topps) and half cards and collectibles. I only care about the cards. Since I still collect modern cards, I usually find stuff there and am often impressed by the inventory – blasters and blasters of what Topps/Panini has available at the time.
But the thing is, Topps doesn’t have much available until 2025. There’s Bowman, but I don’t care. There’s Chrome. Good luck finding it. There is Series 2, but I’ve decided I won’t buy it anymore. And there’s Heritage, which is in my sweet spot. However, all I have left are short prints, so I don’t see myself spending $25 or $50 to find a few SPs and a handful of parallels. As for finding Allen & Ginter, Archives, Big League, Stadium Club and all the other products Topps has released in the past – they simply don’t exist. (There were boxes of 2022 and 2023 Topps brands available – nothing that caught my attention).
So the current packaged product is not for me. Let’s move on to singles. No dice. The in-store D&As I knew three years ago are no longer there. Dave & Adam’s has never been a place to buy discount boxes, at least as long as I’ve known them. Even in 2009, when I stopped there, it was all about new products and buying boxes and blasters, but I could find singles for $2 or $3. When I visited Sunday, there were no singles, even under glass, that you could buy for a few dollars. Every card I saw was not only under glass, but also under plastic. Every last card was judged. And bloated.
I don’t buy graded cards unless the price is comparable to what I would spend for an unlimited card. And in 95% of cases you pay more because it has been assessed.
That was all that was available to me – apart from a lot of football, basketball and hockey (boxing and singles). I didn’t check to see if any of those singles were unrated, but I bet they were all sealed. Even the options for card supplies have decreased, which I noticed on the last visit.
So I walked out of that previously glorious place without buying anything. The only item that seemed like a bargain was the Josh Allen jerseys for $50 (all the other Bills name jerseys were the same price). And I’ve never said that about memorabilia.
Luckily I was visiting my sister-in-law during the visit and she found an always useful item:
A folder and pages.
This is a common gift from her, usually at Christmas. Often it is accompanied by packs of cards, but this time there was none.
Because she couldn’t find one. Fanatics kill small collectors like me.
#strikes